Mar 31, 2011

Ok, i'm obsessed

This is a seriously overkill post, but I'm going ahead with it anyway. Remember the behind the scenes post a few days ago? Well, I almost forgot I shot that gorgeous bouquet in THREE different films. I thought this post would be a fun look at the nature of a few films - the Fuji Provia 100f, Kodak Portra 400NC (discontinued) and the Kodak Portra 400. Plus this bouquet was so insanely pretty it made my life easy. I'd liken it to a fashion photographer shooting an experienced, beautiful model. This bouquet could do no wrong (ok with the minor exception that it's hard to properly expose the super light pink flowers and the rest of the scene properly).

Just a note that I will sometimes do some in-scanner color adjustments but other than that, I don't touch much in Photoshop except cleaning the million specks of dust and maybe bumping the black levels a smidgen.

Below is the Provia, a slide film I tried for the first time this past weekend and gushed over in the last two posts. In print film, it's pretty hard to get harsh blown-out highlights, but you can see in these first two that there definitely are some blown out bits and there is little hope in recovering them. I love the overall dreamy feel of this film though. And if I didn't see the results with the Kodak, I would say I liked the colors here.

But then below, we have the ever lovely Portra NC and I can't get over the colors in this. I mean I don't even think they look this nice in real life. This film did something seriously magical here and I love the shades of green it brought out. This third picture just screams "spring," doesn't it? I'm sad this film is being replaced because I really do love the results I've gotten from it from the Contax as well as my 35mm.

I do, of course, give the new Portra (below) credit for being able to handle some extreme under- and overexposing. In these first two shots, I still had the camera rated for ISO 100 from the Provia (ah, rookie mistake!) and exposed properly for that, but scanned properly, they don't look too badly overexposed at all. The colors aren't as rich as they could be, but this probably would have looked horrendous on digital. And then the last few here were a bit underexposed. The color range is pretty crazy.

While I do like these deep jewel tones, overall the Portra NC feels most like my style. What do you guys think?

In a way I feel like I can't take full credit for these because really, the Contax, the film and the subject did all the work. :D

17 comments
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I don't understand film and photography enough to give much constructive comments but just from the aesthetic stand point, the NC really have an advantage here with the bright white setting. It is my favorite among the 3 here.

thanks for the comparison. fascinating really. the middle one seems as though the set was shot in a different spot making it hard to compare but if it was in the same spot then i do like the softer blush tones there. all are gorgeous really and like you said, you can't pick a loser! they all win!

Wow! The results are so different yet so beautiful in their own unique way! I have to say that 3rd photo using the Portra NC is my favourite photograph but I prefer the colours/tones in the new Portra film in the last set. Those deep, rich jewel tones are lovely!

About

The title, "Lingered Upon," is taken from one of my favorite T.S. Eliot poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Here, it could mean that I lingered upon some moment and made a photo of it. On this blog, you'll find both personal work and "work" work, with plenty of travel and style mixed in.